This handout is an attempt to explain to students my strategy for thesis creation. Although I have found the "three story thesis" approach—observation, analysis, interpretation—to be a useful model, some of the students still have a problem conceptualizing what they're being asked to do. The argument pyramid provides a visual explanation of what I'm looking for: a broad base of observation that narrows through analysis and culminated in an original "point" of interpretation. This, is , of course, an over-simplification of the dialectic moves that truly exceptional writers make in their essays, but I have found this handout to be worthwhile as a jumping-off point for students who are accustomed to writing superficial high school list papers.